Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 1001 posts

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#51

Post by justrealist »

D13Fd wrote: post #11
justrealist wrote: post #2

IANAL but it's baffling to me that this one took so long. This has been the clearest-cut abuse of monopoly in tech for a long time. Why did they waste time trying to convince judges that "free" could be monopoly pricing, when this was in broad daylight?

How is this even a monopoly? That's like saying "Walmart has a monopoly on selling products at its stores." There are thousands of competing phones with their own software and app stores.

If Walmart had a 60% market share then yes the JD would be on their balls for store brands.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#52

Post by pvg »

Arkanum wrote: post #6
justrealist wrote: post #2

IANAL but it's baffling to me that this one took so long. This has been the clearest-cut abuse of monopoly in tech for a long time. Why did they waste time trying to convince judges that "free" could be monopoly pricing, when this was in broad daylight?

Isn't part of the problem how US anti-monopoly law is worded requiring proof of "consumer harm" which is normally measured in increased costs? In the case of Apple's monopoly, its not clear how you would measure that let alone prove it to a court.

US anti-monopoly law is worded requiring proof of "consumer harm" which is normally measured in increased costs?

This is more a matter of interpretation, policy and practice rather than statute and these things can change over time. The interpretation you're describing was itself an innovation at one time.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#53

Post by wtallis »

flutas wrote: post #35
gnicholas wrote: post #13

> The Justice Department, which began its investigation into Apple in 2019, chose to build a broader and more ambitious case than any other regulator has brought against the company. As I was reading the specific charges detailed in the article, I was thinking this case seems like a stretch and will be difficult to prove. Apple will argue that security and/or performance reasons drove their decisions related to brows…

I'm (legitimately) curious could the fact that (almost) all of that is now open in the EU due to their laws but not the US. Would that hurt their argument since they blocked off the change from the US. Or would that all be solved by a statement along the lines of "Well, EU iPhones are now less secure."

The arguments about performance and security aren't about whether Apple could open up, but about whether they should. The changes in the EU will answer the latter, but slowly.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#54

Post by Pfhortune »

lokar wrote: post #18

As an iPhone user I am willing (and believe I am) paying Apple a premium for a well curated and reviewed App Store (vs android). I just wish they would stop “double dipping “ and charging far in excess of their costs (and in excess of reasonable profit) to the app sellers.

> I am willing (and believe I am) paying Apple a premium for a well curated and reviewed App Store (vs android)

There is a plethora of evidence that this is not the case. See this recent example: https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/08/a-fake-app-masquerading-as...

(Yes, it was pulled, but that was _after_ the public noticed and LastPass had to issue a warning)

> I just wish they would stop “double dipping “ and charging far in excess of their costs (and in excess of reasonable profit) to the app sellers.

That quarterly growth has to come from somewhere! Line goes up!

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#56

Post by s3r3nity »

miguelxt wrote: post #42
lokar wrote: post #18

As an iPhone user I am willing (and believe I am) paying Apple a premium for a well curated and reviewed App Store (vs android). I just wish they would stop “double dipping “ and charging far in excess of their costs (and in excess of reasonable profit) to the app sellers.

You should be allowed to stay inside Apple's walled garden while the rest of users should be allowed to leave it whenever they want (at the very minimum at their own risk).

> ...rest of users should be allowed to leave it whenever they want (at the very minimum at their own risk).

You can, though? Just go buy an Android. There are a billion different options there.

Heck, you can also still buy old-school type flip phones at Walmart.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#57

Post by dagmx »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #5

Tim Sweeney didn't get it done, so the US government will pick up the slack. I imagine they were waiting to see if Epic won before trying the case themselves, but Biden may have wanted to make sure it got moving before the election may take it out of his hands. One of the most impressive successes in Epic's cases was just dragging the evidence into the open. A lot of illegal behavior is hidden in confidential agreeme…

This case has very little overlap with the Epic suite other than one of the defendants being the same.

I’m also curious what illegal confidential behaviour you believe was found in the Epic case? The one count that the judge found in favour of Epic didn’t require any form of discovery as it was based on public policy.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#58

Post by jwells89 »

rvz wrote: post #24

Finally. It was about time that this would happen. Google got one anti-trust lawsuit, Meta should get another one (by owning too many social networks with billions of users each) and after the failed anti-trust lawsuit that Epic tried to sue Apple under, this time the DOJ is finally going after Apple. Good. I'm really looking forward to the United States v. Apple Inc. anti-trust lawsuit that will actually make some c…

Google could use another pass to put a stop to their aggressive cross-promotion of Chrome, which is difficult if not impossible to compete with given how many Google products people use on a daily basis. Every time I visit Google, YouTube, etc with a fresh non-Chrome browser profile there’s a barrage of, “Download Chrome!” popups to dismiss, not to mention how Google iOS apps use link taps as opportunities to promote Chrome or all the random third party Windows software that has Chrome bundled with it.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#59

Post by kbf »

lokar wrote: post #18

As an iPhone user I am willing (and believe I am) paying Apple a premium for a well curated and reviewed App Store (vs android). I just wish they would stop “double dipping “ and charging far in excess of their costs (and in excess of reasonable profit) to the app sellers.

That used to be my stance as well, but the App Store has gotten so bad in recent years. These days if there’s an app I want to install, it’s much easier to find the app store link on the developers page than to search in the App Store. At this point the “user experience” argument isn’t really there beyond easy payments and subscription management.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#60

Post by acdha »

dagmx wrote: post #41
smoldesu wrote: post #21

How do you think Apple will differentiate their case from United States v. Microsoft Corp. , where Microsoft was implicated for almost identical monopoly misconduct? The complaint literally says verbatim, "But after launching the iPhone, Apple began stifling the development of cross-platform technologies on the iPhone, just as Microsoft tried to stifle cross-platform technologies on Windows."

One of the big factors was that Microsoft were doing things like paying OEMs to not include other browsers. This was also the crux of the issue in Epic v Google recently.

Or operating systems: things like BeOS, OS/2, and Linux couldn’t be offered on a given model without paying for a Windows license or giving up volume pricing for the entire line.
Post reply on HN